words Alexa Wang
Bluetooth has long been an amazing contribution to the technological world, and as many millennials will remember before bandwidth services were made to be as wide and fast as they are today and before data was widely available, Bluetooth was the only option afforded to us to send our friends funny videos and photographs.
By putting your phone next to your friends, the Bluetooth would do its job, and in five minutes you would be delivered a funny meme or video. While it is quite antiquated, it still has its many uses and services, still to this day actually. Whether we connect our phone to Bluetooth in the car to listen to music or use Bluetooth headsets for phone calls, there are loads of amazing ways you can use it. But here are some facts you might not have known about Bluetooth!
Bluetooth Can Be Bad For Your Health
The radio, television, and mobile phones, all use high-frequency waves to transmit information wirelessly, and while Bluetooth also uses high-frequency waves, it is a lot more concentrated and transmits them over a much shorter distance. A highly common question is whether Bluetooth is safe or not; unfortunately, it has been proven to be hazardous for health in high dosages and small spaces. Bluetooth utilizes microwave high-frequency waves with a range of 2.6 GHz to 2.4835 GHz, whereas the power output from a Bluetooth radio is 100 mW, 2.5 mW, and 1mW for all of the respective Bluetooth classes. Mobile phones are proven to have the highest concentration of energy and thus the most damaging effects, and when we then take into consideration that we hold phones next to our ears all day every day, it is incredible to think of the amount of damage we potentially do to our bodies, our brains, and our nervous systems.
The advent of the digitized age has seen a huge increase in the number of fatal tumors and has seen an increase in alleged carcinogenic technology. Many technologies are radioactive and thus can cause detrimental and long-lasting health problems for both you and your family.
Bluetooth Has Royal Origins
A seldom known, wonderful fact is the origins of Bluetooth. Many ask, ‘Where does Bluetooth get its name from?’ Well, amusingly, Bluetooth derives its name from the 10th-century Danish king, Harold ‘Blatand’ Gormsson, the King of Denmark. Harold Gormsson was said to have adored blueberries, loved them even, so much, that his teeth were always blue, from eating them incessantly. It was reported he would eat them with every meal, and as a snack between meals!
The Bluetooth logo, another little-known fact, is also the Nordic initials of Harold Bluetooth in the Nordic script. Thus, Bluetooth truly is a royally great idea!
Bluetooth Was Invented by Swedish Friends!
Despite its noble Dutch origins, Bluetooth was invented by Sven Mattisson and Jaap Haartsen in the year 1990 while working for Sony Ericsson mobile, a world-renowned mobile phone manufacturer, well known for the inception of their ‘walkman’ into pop-culture and mainstream media. The ‘walkman’ was one of the first mobile phones able to play music videos and music on your portable mobile device. Bluetooth went into development in the late 1980s in Lund, Sweden. In 1998, the major mobile industry giants at that time came together to form the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, these companies were Ericsson, Nokia, Toshiba, IBM, and Intel Pro, thus solidifying its place on the market, and making it here to stay.
Its Popularity Is Huge!
It was predicted in a research paper in 2003 that the Bluetooth user base would grow to more than a billion in 2006. When we compare that in the year 2008 only 5% of mobile devices were Bluetooth ready, and now in our current epoch when 95% of devices support Bluetooth, we really do not need statistics to imagine the magnitude of Bluetooth’s use. If in 2008 with 5% there were a billion users, how many must there be today? Hundreds and hundreds of billions! Fascinating, really.
Multiple Uses
Part of the appeal of Bluetooth is its multiple uses. It can be used as aforementioned to connect your phone to your car, which is now named ‘Stereo audio,’ and its second-largest use, just behind that, is the use of ‘Bluetooth hands-free’ which enables you to listen to music without any wires, your phone connected directly to your car, while you stream your favorite songs and videos. Bluetooth devices can be used with other phones at the same time. The newest Bluetooth update allows a singular device to act as a so-called ‘master’ and communicate and transmit to up to seven so-called ‘slaves’ at any one time.
It is recommended that you do not spend all of your time using technology and rather spend a lot of time outdoors. Balance is important as with everything in life, and you cannot expect to spend all day indoors on a computer and see no negative health effects.
